Maseylia : Echoes of the Past

Maseylia : Echoes of the Past - достаточно приятная игра, с отличным мувментом, незапарной боевой системой и таинственным сюжетом. Большую часть игры ты буквально двигаешься в потоке, но на секунду не останавливаясь, но мне кажется - разработчикам не хватило тестирования, чтобы довести её до ума. Я застрял в «Затопленной шахте», это ответвление от главной локации и интересно то, что я смог ее исследовать, дойти до конца, но мне не хватает воздуха (под водой), чтобы выбраться. Я полчаса пытался вылезти из шахты, пробовал плыть ко входу, пробовал налево и это невозможно. По обсуждениям я понял, что перед исследованием шахты, мне нужен был ещё один апгрейд, но так как я уже здесь - найти его и заюзать уже поздно. По сути я просто застрял в моменте из которого выбраться невозможно. Ранних сохранений в игре нет, а перепроходить все заново, желания уже нет у меня. Разработчикам желаю, чтобы они в будущем лучше тестировали свои игры и не было подобных моментов. Покупать не рекомендую, может в будущем после патчей

Only ~1.5 hours in, might update this if I keep playing. Not sure I will. Game is alright, but has some issues that prevent it from being more than maybe a 6 or 7 out of 10. Felt like I should write this review anyways since the developer(s) seem(s) to actually read them and improve the game based on them, which is much appreciated. Good: - Decent platforming game feel - I have read several reviews saying the movement felt clunky. Apparently, there was a somewhat recent update improving the movement. I am not sure how much this changed since I have only plaxed it after the update. The game is still a bit too floaty for my taste and doesn't feel quite as good as something like A Hat in Time or Pseudoregalia but solid enough that it never really bothered me - Some fairly fun platforming. Platforms you can turn on and off were interesting, ice skating was surprisingly fun despite, or actually because of the ice physics - Story that uses words sparingly enough that it doesn't get in the way and you slowly discover what happened there. Nothing super deep, but works for the type of game this is Not so good: - Pacing is too quick and world progression too linear. Some other users have mentioned this as well; the game goes from upgrade to upgrade very quickly without giving any of them all that much room to breathe and play around with. Whenever you get an upgrade, there isn't usually all that many ways to go with it. Oftentimes only 1 or 2 places to backtrack to per ability, and you often get looped back straight to those places after getting the upgrade, which is nice in theory but puts quite little agency on the player to backtrack themselves. Maybe the game will open up a lot more at some point (thinking along the lines of when you get the Mantis Claw in Hollow Knight or the Ice Beam in Super Metroid and all of a sudden you can go everywhere), but based on the other reviews and the limited backtracking spots the game has so far I suspect this will not happen. - The combat is mostly pointless. Other people have pointed this out already and I don't have much more to say about it but I agree. - Readability can be poor sometimes because of the limited color palette, but also because the modelling is sometimes weird. Things are shaped a bit weirdly sometimes and you occasionally wonder if you're supposed to be where you are right now. The way geometry is placed can also sometimes feel a bit random. - Shots from the bow get blocked by random bits of terrain quite easily, despite having a hitbox that is generally too small and often misses when aiming normally. Could potentially be fixed by separating the arrow hitboxes into a very small one that collides only with terrain and a much bigger one that collides only with enemies and relevant objects. Maybe even remove the terrain hitbox entirely, although I am not sure if this could lead to some weird spots where you can shoot arrows through walls at grapple spots. Another idea would be to make the arrow not get blocked by terrain for a short distance after shooting, since this mostly seems to happen on ledges you currently stand on. - Z-targeting currently seems to always target the closest enemy or targetable object regardless of camera direction. I think targeting the enemy closest to the current camera view would be more intuitive, since I found myself wanting to lock on to a certain enemy several times only for the camera to quickly pan, sometimes at a 90 degree angle, away from what I was looking at to a different enemy or other targetable object I didn't even realize was there. This can be particularly annoying against ranged enemies which you usually want to take out first. - There was a really weird "cutscene" (I think it was called a "cinematic"?) in the ice area which made me assume that something was gonna happen in it. Instead, it was just a static image which you only got out of by "skipping" the cutscene. Not sure if that was a bug or if it was just supposed to be that o…

All of this game was a huge disappointment I just don't even know where to start. It's just a walking simulator with no personality, no story, and the "cutscenes" are just still images where you sit there waiting for something to happen and nothing happens? I do not understand the hype, but if you are a fan of platformers or metroidvanias you won't find this game to be up to par in any way. I guess maybe the personality is just that it's a walking simulator with a major visual clarity problem? Almost every single room had different 3D models Z fighting, probably from sloppy design or geometry. I learned how to avoid Z fighting in beginner tutorials in Blender, and I'm not even a game dev. It's just amateur in the worst way. I cheesed the bosses without even moving, the boss design and combat is so half assed it just seems pointless to even have them. The platforming was so jank and there were multiple times I got out of bounds and had to restart and lose progress. Also backtracking is such a painful chore because rather than create an interesting and engaging biome design, everything is just oversized hallways or caverns with a bunch of platforms that are just designed to waste your time. I was scratching my head the entire time trying to understand who this is for. Not me, definitely.